Sessions 12-17

[Adminenkainen]

Session 12

Pre-game notes: The weather has been warming up for the past six days, melting half the snow. The temperature reaches 36 degrees for two hours on the 18th. Also, the tunnel dug under the Fog Wall, after several days of being watched, fills in with the Fog.

February 18, 1942. Wednesday.

The Heroes were marching through the Southland Hideout within a company of 30 volunteer rescuers. It was very similar to a strategy they had tried before, only this time the key would be not splitting up their forces. And this time it worked. They managed to get the entire company through the hideout to the Orchard Place entrance without encountering any further opposition after the front entrance. They avoided getting lost by sticking to the path they knew best.

Theo the Ogre was still in his lair, but recoiled in fear at the sight of Gracie. The White Knight tried his best to recruit Theo, but Theo couldn’t understand the concepts WK was throwing out at him, like being nice to people. Ultimately, the Heroes came up with another stratagem -- recruit Theo to tackle The Baron for them.

The trick would be getting Theo -- and 30 people -- up through the 30’ high shaft to Orchard Place. WK hopped up the shaft again, secured rope, and lowered it down. This time, the company had also brought a 20’ ladder. The plan was for everyone to climb the ladder and then only have to climb the last 10’ by rope. This plan seemed way too dangerous to 10 of the volunteers, who then volunteered to stay behind and guard the shaft. The remaining 20 made it up safely. But when it came time for Blaze to carry Theo up the ladder, their combined weight was too much for the ladder. Blaze caught the rope in time, but Theo landed and hurt himself. An enraged Theo began chasing the remaining volunteers away and most of the Heroes jumped or climbed down to deal with Theo more thoroughly. But the fight was over before it begun when Batman cast a sleep spell and put Theo to sleep. The errant ogre was tied to his stool and gagged.

Meanwhile, Blaze was up top with the 20-man team in the still-largely unexplored Orchard Place quadrangle, and observed there were three large bonfires spaced out down the south side of Algonquin Road, east of here. When the others rejoined him, they checked the woods to the south for the truck they stashed there and found it had been reclaimed by the Baron’s men.

Blaze wanted to ignore the obvious sentry posts marked by the bonfires and lead his men through the woods to Orchard Place, but the others were more concerned about those sentries. So it was decided that White Knight and Darklash, their best sneakers, would sneak up on the sentries and see what the situation was. Everyone was good with this plan -- except Batman.

White Knight and Darklash were observing two sentries with military-grade arms and armor by the first bonfire, when Batman got impatient and charged the sentries at super fast speed. Batman and the sentries got in a firefight, which forced WK and Dl to come out of hiding and get involved. Their tactic was that WK would distract the sentry by missing, and then Dl would follow up with a sword stab. One sentry went down and the other stopped fighting, but refused to surrender his gun. Batman cast a charm spell on the sentry to get his sub-machine gun, and commanded him to stop the two additional sentries running from the next fire.

Everyone (which now included Gracie, who showed up later) stood around and watched as the charmed sentry did his best to talk the other two out of getting involved, but wound up getting shot himself in the process. Now everyone had to get in on this fight and stop the other two, using much the same tactics as before. This time they knocked one out and the other surrendered. Batman had just time enough to administer first aid to his “friend” before they had to decide what to do about the third sentry outpost. Darklash convinced the others that they did not want these sentries in their way on the way back, so they took on the last pair. This time, WK’s punches were more effective, and Batman got too gun crazy and murdered one by spraying a full round of bullets into him at point blank range.
The five remaining sentries were left tied up by a bonfire.

Meanwhile, Blaze was still navigating the woods with his 20 men. At the center of the woods, they found a tall, broad hill 100’ high with a strange, egg-shaped building atop it. Blaze went to check it out and found it was the home of a small, strange cult calling themselves the Odd Fellows (despite one of them being female). They seemed to think of this space within the Fog Wall as some kind of afterlife and this was their refuge where they could while away their time with games of chance and not worry about the scarier details of this afterlife. The female “sister” was the only one from Orchard Place, the elder “brother” was the owner of this house and came with it from where it once stood in Utah, and the others came from some locations in between. Blaze invited them to come with to Mount Prospect if they wanted to, and in return they warned him against eating the poisonous berries outside. Of course, his troops had been gathering berries all this time.

The Outsiders were easily able to follow the trail of Blaze and his men and came upon the same hill and the same building. They made the inhabitants the same offer, but met the same resistance to leave (they were debating whether an exit from the Fog Wall even fit in their new dogma).

Soon, the Outsiders were reunited south of the woods (it was easier catching up because of the trail of dropped berries). They headed straight for the church, where a crowd of 50 had gathered and had been hunkered down for over a day waiting to be rescued. Some of them went out to alert more villagers who wanted to hear what the Outsiders had to say about the rescue. More filtered in over the next half-hour, asking for proof of where they came from (the Heroes had not brought any, other than the testimony of their neighbors) and more details of what was going on.

While the others were making their case inside, Blaze was standing guard out front (there were also an overflow of people standing outside the church discussing their options). It was then that a truck pulled up and The Baron’s men told everyone to disperse.

One by one, the heroes heard a commotion outside, but Blaze had the situation pretty well in hand. Some of these troopers had tear gas grenades, but Blaze would set them off in their hands with fire and engulf them in their own tear gas. The driver tried to hit Blaze with his truck, but then Batman emerged and shot the tires out from under one side of the truck. Gracie had been holding back a lot this day, but she did some hardcore grappling here. Soon, they had all seven rounded up and locked in the back of the truck they came in (Blaze bent some metal around the handles).

In case more troopers turned up, the Outsiders had to move up their timetable. They left the church with the 60 men and women who were determined to leave already, separated into two groups. They made their way cross-country through the farmland west of Mannheim Road -- only to be met by sniper fire. It was coming from at least one of the surrounding farmhouses. White Knight commanded his group of troops to lay cover fire for his fleeing refugees; the second group used the same tactic, but with Batman adding a Wall of Fog spell (his first time using it) to give cover from one of the houses.

The snipers had succeeded in picked off some of the refugees -- three were saved, but two died right away from injuries. Luckily, there were ladders nearby to use as stretchers. Soon, everyone was at the shaft that led down under the wall (not even the dead were left behind). It was a laborious project to get everyone down below, but they succeeded.

Down below, mobsters had rallied and engaged the 10 volunteers left behind in a firefight. Two of the volunteers were dead and two more seriously injured. Again, everyone was brought with.

It took a long time to move almost 100 people through passages that were single file in some places, but eventually everyone reached the laboratory unopposed. Only, this time, there were actually scientists in the lab.

Blaze was quick to question these men, all of whom worked in the chemistry department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. They all believed they had been captured and were being held by mobsters somewhere in Chicago, and had been for the past five weeks. Blaze realized that meant they were late arrivals, coming after the Fog Wall went up. But to everyone’s astonishment, these men had heard nothing about the Fog Wall or Mount Prospect’s plight. The scientists knew Anton “Lieutenant” Herschel and had been commanded by him to duplicate a “potion”. They had a small sample of it with them.

The scientist did agree to be rescued, and even went back to get a fourth scientist. They all escaped into Mount Prospect, where Mayor Besander was eager to greet the refugees. He offered to find housing for them, as the town had for the airplane refugees earlier, and he thanked the heroes for their bravery, and for keeping the casualties as low as they were.

Blaze was eager to put the scientists to work with the pharmacists working on pill identification, but something else was more pressing now.

Some time had passed since the large pond was drained in the Southland. There had been something large in the ice and the dirt at the bottom that they had waited until it warmed up to investigate ((note: this was a retcon of what actually happened)). What they found was -- an old rusty street car. They entered it and found another surprise, that the only thing in it was an antique magic lantern (an early slide projector). There was a tray of 22 slides under the lantern and some of the Heroes felt compelled to try projecting some on the wall of the street car.

Darklash went first and projected three images -- a gem, an idiot, and a star ((her INT dropped by 4 and her DEX went up by 2)). Before leaving the street car, she stumbled across a pile of 50 gems that no one had seen there before.

Batman tried the slides. He projected a comet, the vizier, and the knight ((he will gain a level after his next fight and Megan can get told to her the solution to any one dilemma she chooses)).

Blaze tried one slide. He projected a key. Before leaving the street car, he spotted a treasure map that no one had spotted earlier.

WK and Gracie abstained from trying the strange magic lantern.

[Adminenkainen]

Session 13
February 20, 1942

"I am investigating places where people began showing up when the fog wall appeared,” Darklash said. “I know of one who showed up here on the first day but have there been any others since?"

She asked this in Wille’s Tavern, where she had first appeared in Mt. Prospect 50 days earlier. Adolph Willie reported that none had since that first day, but that his neighbor (the Busse-Biermann Hardware Store) had something similar happen towards the end of January, with a man found hiding in the backroom of a locked store who should not have been able to get in there.

Darklash had a weird feeling of deja vu about the place, but could not pin it down to anything in particular. She decided, though, to check around all the other places in town where she knew of people, including her teammates, appearing. Oddly enough, she found each building did have something in common -- each had a stained glass window, either large or small, that depicted a star (and sometimes more, but always a star). There was only one standout exception -- the onion shed that The White Knight said he appeared in. But not far from the onion shed was the Crofoot Manufacturing Company and, sure enough, they had a stained glass window with a star.

Batman, meanwhile, was sparring with Lyle, his very own Robin. Batman was winning, but it wasn’t easy -- Lyle was a good scrapper for just a kid. Batman, as just Dean, went to find a seamstress in town who could sew a Robin costume and found one who would do it in 2 days for $5. He paid her $20.

Blaze was having the 4 gems appraised he found in the treasure chest his map had led to -- $250 each. But the main thing he was waiting for was for Batman to cast a spell for him the next day.

White Knight told everyone about how he wanted to go after The Baron and set up a base in Orchard Place.

February 21, 1942

Batman cast Read Languages & Magic on the cloak Blaze had found in the chest and found it was a Cloak of Good Luck. When Blaze tried it on, it turned flame red in color.

Blaze was intrigued with Darklash’s new line of investigation and went along. They questioned the owners of the buildings with the stained glass windows to see if they knew anything about who made the windows, but what they found was that no one had ever noticed the stained glass windows until pointed out to them (except for the church windows). Blaze touched the windows to make sure they were real.

Batman decided Robin needed a shield, one that was metal and lightweight. He contracted the idle workers at the Crofoot factory to build it for $50.

February 22, 1942

Darklash and Blaze decided they needed to check out the Tavern in the Southland to see if it had a stained glass window, and they invited Batman and Robin to come along. Batman wanted to arm Robin with a revolver, but Darklash and Blaze were so opposed to the idea that Batman relented and only gave Robin a knife instead (and Darklash loaned him brass knuckles).

The Southland was all mud and melted snow now, so it was easy to spot lots of tracks around the Tavern. And then they heard children playing in the tavern’s front yard! Peeking, they saw six boys playing baseball. They are Lyle’s age and younger, but Lyle had never seen any of them before. The boys scattered to go hide, but there was really nowhere to hide except behind the tavern. Blaze activated his super-speed and herded the boys into a corner so they could be questioned.

The boys were all sons of mobsters in the Hideout, sent her to entertain themselves for the day where they would be safe, while something “big” was happening. The boys normally lived in quarters somewhere in the hideout, as did the five girls who were inside playing with dolls. Darklash managed to go in and coax the girls into talking and became the good cop to Blaze’s bad cop.

They also learned from the children that, while the children had been in the house over the hideout recently, they had seen no sign of the nomes (though the children knew them as munchkins). As curious as the encounter with the children was, the Heroes decided it was best to leave them here and let their parents pick them up later. But so wrapped up in interviewing the children were they that they almost forgot what they had come for -- to check for stained glass windows! Indeed, they did find a stained glass window with a star, but not only did Darklash find one on the ground floor, but Blaze found one on the upstairs floor (the upstairs rooms showed signs of occupation, but nothing of value). Now they had another mystery on their hands -- if one window made a house into some kind of “portal site”, what did two windows mean?

Instead, the Heroes went straight for the house next, to see if they could find out what happened to the nomes. The house was perhaps the farthest yet in time -- 1996 -- and this time had no robot defenders. Batman played with a strange television hooked up to a typewriter in the bedroom. There was no sign that the nomes had ever been here, though the Heroes knew they had been (the House looked like a model home again, as it always did when it was uninhabited).

For answers to where the nomes had gone, the Heroes headed down into the hideout, through the garage entrance. They were careful to check for traps where they had encountered some before, but finding none moved on -- until Darklash opened the door to the couch lounge and set off an explosion! Darklash was seriously injured by the blast and everyone else was hurt. Worse, Batman had stocked up on offensive magic and had only one healing spell ready, which he used on himself instead of Darklash.

It seemed like time to go rest instead of time to explore, but the Outsiders pressed on anyway. Blaze in particular wanted to check in on The Spook, but when they returned to his lair, it was abandoned. Then Blaze wanted to try the magic lever that had opened the way to Des Plaines. He pushed the lever closed and open again, wanting to see if it would open a second gate through the Fog, or just the same one. He then pumped the lever a bunch of times to see if he could open multiple gates. When they returned next to Des Plaines, they learned that the gate in the Fog had shut and then reopened, trapping one traveler in the Fog. The rapid pumping of the lever had no additional effect.

February 23, 1942

A good night’s sleep had helped, and today Batman had more magic healing available that he distributed more fairly. But Darklash and Blaze were still not up to full strength yet, so returning to the hideout was put off until the 24th.

Batman and Robin picked up Robin’s shield and then went looking for trouble. Their daytime patrol took them through largely empty streets of Mount Prospect and up and down the largely underdeveloped Northwest Highway. It was, however, outside the gas station on Northwest Highway, that trouble came looking for them! The Baron, uninterested in waiting for his eventual confrontation with the Heroes who had vexed him, had come hunting for them on his own. Wearing a civil war uniform, but speaking in a thick foreign accent, he challenged Batman. Drawing the saber he wore, the saber’s blade burst into flame!

Batman answered the challenge with blazing guns, but all of his bullets either missed or deflected harmlessly off The Baron. Batman changed tactics and tried to hit The Baron with a sleep spell, but a powerful slash of the flaming sword disrupted the spell. Then, before The Baron could press his advantage, Batman managed to get in a quick charm person spell -- and The Baron was suddenly very cooperative (and more than a little homosexual). Batman patted him down, found an expensive pocket watch, took the sword, and handcuffed The Baron. Then he led The Baron to jail and turned him in.

Everyone was astonished when Batman and Robin got back to base and shared their tale, but none more so than White Knight, who had been arguing for days that they needed to go back to Orchard Place and deal with The Baron, and now it had been done without him!

February 24, 1942

Everyone was feeling much better today, so Darklash and Blaze were able to join Batman and White Knight as the four of them went to the jail to interrogate The Baron. They found The Baron, stripped down to his long underwear, but waiting for them patiently in his cell. Batman took a photograph of The Baron like that. They questioned The Baron and The Baron questioned them and it became clear that The Baron did not know how they all got there, but was convinced that they had been brought here to fight each other. The Baron’s origin story was that he had been a mercenary working out of Morocco when he blacked out on January 1 and appeared in Orchard Place. It was then that The Baron surprised them all by wrecking his way out of the jail cell and attacking Batman, the charm spell evidently no longer affecting him! Batman’s sleep spell only succeeded in putting Robin to sleep. The Baron shrugged off a fiery blast from Blaze, moved from the cell into the narrow hallway with amazing speed, and tried grappling Batman to get his sword back. As he concentrated on holding and punching Batman, everyone laid into him with their swords and fists. Everyone got in some licks and soon The Baron was smarting enough that he tried to run out of the jail to escape, but a stab in the back from Darklash rendered him unconscious.

Deputy Hoffman had witnessed all this (though could do nothing to join in, in the narrow confines of the hall outside the jail cells) and was terrified by the question that came next -- what should they do with a super-criminal who could bust through locked doors? Batman brought up the practical, but unethical solution of killing him. They even went to Mayor Besander’s office to ask the mayor about the legality of killing him. Besander said this was a weighty issue, but possibly within the scope of the emergency powers the combined mayors had given themselves; Besander would have to contact the other mayors and see if they wanted to form a tribunal to judge the merits of killing him.

They still had to do something with The Baron in the meanwhile, and it was Blaze who came up with another solution -- wrapping him in chains and keeping him suspended so he could get no leverage. But even this would only be a stopgap measure until they could find a more permanent solution. Someone suggested calling on Carl Alscher, the Wizard of the Burning Tower, for a favor. So later, in Des Plaines, Batman threw a metal thermos through the upstairs window with an unusual request on it. A response came back the same way. Carl said to bring The Baron around to his secret entrance and leave him there in the first room and go. More, Carl wrote that he knew Batman’s friends had killed his “silent stalker” and so this was the last favor he would do for them.

With The Baron disposed of, it was time to go to Orchard Place and see about wrapping things up there. The Outsiders returned to the hideout, but entered through the laboratory entrance this time. They were surprised to find The Spook was now using this room as his base! He and his remaining apprentice had taken over this space, but were still unaware of the trapdoor on the landing above it. Blaze showed them where it was, so The Spook could use the secret cave as an even better base.

The Spook had useful information too. He knew the two missing women were with prostitutes who answered to Mr. Gould, and he knew the general location of where the prostitutes were. Further, he had witnessed the “big event” the children had talked about from the other day, and it was a meeting between “Mr. Big” and some boss from the next level down in the hideout. The Spook could not get close because the two men were so heavily guarded, nor could he hear what was said, but he could see that of the two of them, one appeared to be a normal man, but the other man had a cyclopean eye and horns.

The Spook was asked to take on the task of freeing the women, as the Heroes moved on to Orchard Place. They proceeded south, facing no resistance -- even when they ran into Theo the Ogre again. This time, Theo said he had thought long and hard about the things The White Knight had told him and decided that, if the Outsiders were the toughest people around, that he should be on their side. Theo was left guarding the shaft as the Outsiders ascended up to Orchard Place.

The Outsiders headed straight for the Baron’s manor and Gracie wrecked down the gate. There were three armed guards in the courtyard (including Lt. Gill Elmore, who WK had talked to before), who all were willing to discuss conditional surrender after seeing Batman’s photograph of The Baron incarcerated. The deal they worked out was that the guards at the manor would be left alone, so long as they did nothing to interfere with the evacuation of Orchard Place, to which the guards agreed. Further, Blaze told them there was work for them in Mount Prospect if they wanted it, which Gill agreed to consider.

February 25-27, 1942

Over the next three days, the Outsiders worked at going around to all the farms door to door and trying to convince people it was safe to leave. The nights were spooky in Orchard Place, with lots of wolf howling coming from the unexplored western half of the region where the strange hills had arisen. The Outsiders did explore the Douglas Aircraft factory and raided it for more food and tools and siphoned gasoline from the remaining vehicles. They even paid the manor guards $200 for three-fourths of their gasoline stockpile. The cultists in the Ebner Woods were still not interested in leaving, nor were most of the remaining residents, who were too traumatized to leave their homes. But 50 more were willing to make the journey to safety.

As for exploring, the Outsiders did check out Spring Grove, but found nothing unusual there and decided to explore no further. Instead, they led their new wave of refugees out on the 27th -- and thankfully encountered no opposition on the way through the hideout. Theo did terrify a lot of people, but Theo was put in charge of squashing the giant spiders and the large weasels and told where to go to find them. They left through the lab and met The Spook there again. He had news -- he had found the missing women. The married woman did want to be rescued and came home, but the other one found her new life oddly liberating and refused rescue.

[Adminenkainen]

Session 14
February 28-March 3, 1942

Downtime accomplishments:
Batman trained Robin in firing a handgun.
Using the Southland as a shooting range, Batman and Robin encountered a feral dog. Batman charmed it and now the dog is his pet.
Blaze found out that people in Des Plaines had already identified a dozen buildings where people kept popping up in the first two weeks of the Fog Wall and there was a posted list of these places to avoid. Checking the buildings, he found they all followed the same pattern of having stained glass windows with a star.
Darklash talked to Wanda Scott, someone White Knight had met when he first woke up in Mt Prospect. Remembering that WK had heard something cryptic from Wanda on that day, Darklash visited the Scott family. Wanda was a retarded woman being cared for by her parents, and was even less coherent now than when WK met her. But with coaxing, Darklash was able to get some rather remarkable information out of her – Wanda claimed to be able to remember all this happening before, and that everyone else would forget.
Gracie and White Knight left on a secret mission to Orchard Place (see below).
The rescued scientists figured out how to use one of the “magic items” they had as a catalyst to make more of the other kind of “magic item.” By using up all of Blaze’s speed pill, they think they might be able to make up to six “healing potions.” Also, they figured out that when the Fog is isolated from the Fog Wall, it will slowly disappear over the span of a few days.
The ruling council of mayors judged The Baron in absentia and, after a lengthy trial of witnesses and concerned citizens, they condemned him to death. However, when the Heroes went to Carl Alsher to retrieve The Baron from the Everburning Tower, he just blew them off and told them to come back in three days.
Blaze had a “what is our last resort?” conversation with the mayors and the managers of the largest public buildings in the consolidated towns. They knew they had only weeks to go before they ran out of gasoline, a month until they ran out of food, and were purifying river water as fast as they could so they would not run out of drinking water. They rejected Blaze’s requests to start consolidating people into large buildings now to conserve power, over fears that as soon as things didn’t feel as normal as possible at home, people would panic and riot, but they did acknowledge that, at some point, they were going to have to hold lotteries to see who of the 10,000+ residents would get basic services and rations.

In the Southland:
The tilling of graves in the graveyard was finally explained – it was undead clawing their way up from beneath. Four skeletons attacked the Heroes after Darklash had spent a few hours staking out the place.
The Forever House “cycled back” to 1954. The robots were encountered again, though one seemed to have been partially repaired. They were defeated this time, though Robin wound up being seriously injured.

In the Hideout:
The four remaining scientists were all found and rescued (after Blaze sealed their guards into their rooms across the hall).
They learned that The Spook had indeed taken over the secret cave as his new base and, while he and his apprentice were out, they did leave evidence behind that they were working on a map of the hideout.
The Heroes found small groups of mobsters just hanging out in the kitchen and Hershel’s office, including ones they had already met. The mobsters were definitely not part of any active defense of the hideout and seemed to be directionless.
The phone in Hershel’s office connected to a mystery operator. Blaze talked to him, but the operator would not answer questions and hung up on Blaze.
Darklash found a secret door in the north wall of Hershel’s office and it led into the north-south hallway that ran past the giant spider lair.

Meanwhile…

The White Knight had been too busy around the end of February to go on missions with the Outsiders. He had a secret mission of his own -- or rather, several small secret missions.

First, he wanted to befriend the rescued scientists. He hung out with them on the 28th, asking them questions and hanging around to protect them. Six of the eight scientists really dug White Knight, but he focused on befriending senior researcher Roger Baber and young ingenue Albert Charlton.

Second, he rounded up Gracie and they tried revisiting the spots they had first appeared at in Mount Prospect to look for clues they missed. But, of course, it had been two months and any clues left behind (other than the one Darklash had discovered) were long gone.

Third, he spent a greater portion of the 1st of March on a morale-boosting mission -- working out details for a big, morale-boosting parade with the three mayors. He had planned to launch an ambitious civic campaign of public appearances to win hearts and minds, but decided to delegate that to the mayors instead by evening. The lure of adventure was calling to him and he craved the unknown of the Orchard Place region more. So he talked Gracie into going with him again, and they made their way into the Southland on the 2nd.

The route to Orchard Place was a well-known one to them by now; they went through the secret trap door to the lab. They thought they heard noise coming from somewhere else in the hideout, but could not place the direction it was coming from. They wound their way south, east, and south again. Just south of the giant spider lair, they and a patrol of four hoodlums surprised each other, but WK’s silver tongue soon convinced the hoodlums that he and Gracie were also a patrol, disguised as the Outsiders in order to trick them if they met the Outsiders. Free to continue, they reached the Orchard Place shaft and ascended using Gracie’s flight power.

They took the Fog Wall clockwise around the region, searching for gaps. They passed right by the airplane factory, which still looked abandoned. When they reached Orchard Place, the village looked abandoned too. They spent a little time checking homes but, when they heard something in a house and thought it was people, they disturbed a nest of a dozen giant rats the size of terriers that had taken up residence there. Since they surprised the rats, they were able to get away without incident, but it left them troubled about the fate of those still hiding in their homes around here.

Pressing on, they spent the rest of the day following the south Fog Wall, and then half of the west Fog Wall. They camped under the stars, on the side of a massive hill 700’ high that night. Gracie had the second watch and so was the one awake when seven wolves approached them. The wolves seemed hostile -- more so than ordinary wolves should be. She woke up WK and he leaped away with Gracie in his arms, to spare them from having to hurt the wolves.

In mid-leap, by moonlight, they spotted ruins on the hilltop. This made WK’s week, as everyone knew he loved the idea of exploring ruins. They settled down again a ways distant from the wolves so WK could sleep, but visions of ruins-exploring kept dancing through his head and sleep was a long time coming.

Late on the morning of the 3rd, White Knight and Gracie returned to the rocky, boulder-strewn hill and went up to see the ruins. The ruins now appeared to be the remains of an old castle. Just outside the ruins, they disturbed a wasp nest and rushed into the ruins to avoid them. Their hastily-chosen entrance was a crumbled hole in the north wall. In the rubble were four skeletons, and standing in the courtyard was a lone pumpkin-headed scarecrow. The heroes were suspicious of both -- and rightfully so, as one of the skeletons started to rise up, and the pumpkinhead began to move and approach them…

[Adminenkainen]

Session 15

White Knight and Gracie had scrambled away from the castle ruins as fast as they could. They cut their investigation of the Orchard Place region short to return home, at first planning on telling their friends everything they had seen. But they felt unusually exhausted when they got back and put off telling them until morning.

March 4, 1942. Wednesday

When WK woke up, Blaze and Darklash were already out and about. The two Outsiders had people to talk to, most paramount in their mind being Wanda Scott, the girl who seemed to have answers locked in her troubled mind. But first, on patrol, they ran into Gracie -- or so it seemed. It was actually a lookalike, breaking into William Busse’s fine home, along with a man named Roscoe. Blaze and Darklash easily captured Roscoe and fake Gracie and took them to jail.

Meanwhile, when WK went out to find them, he encountered a man named Ralph Fielder, one of the men rescued from Orchard Place, who was hoping an interview with one of the Outsiders would get him a job with the newspaper. WK granted Ralph an intimate interview, but when he tried to get Gracie to do the same she abstained. As usual, she preferred to leave everything about her but her name a secret.

Eventually, all the Outsiders did get back together and began comparing notes. Gracie had nothing to say about the fake Gracie, which seemed suspicious to some of the others. White Knight, who had a gut feeling that he could trust Gracie more than any of the other Outsiders, took offense. Further, it had occurred to him that the pumpkinhead at the castle ruins was very much like the pumpkinheads Carl had guarding the Burning Tower. Coincidence, or was the man the others now trusted with their most dangerous prisoner up to no good? That they trusted Carl but were suspicious of Gracie angered WK so much that he told them nothing of the castle ruins, for now.

Instead, he told them about the parade coming up on the following evening. Everyone agreed to march in it. But first, Darklash and Blaze took turns visiting Wanda. She was tight-lipped during Darklash’s afternoon visit, but opened up to Blaze that evening and mumbled something about the number 7 being bad.

March 5, 1942. Thursday

Thursday was a day of rest. The temperature outdoors was reaching 42 degrees during the heat of the day, making it much nicer to be out. Still, most people were remaining indoors, either lacking any employment to do, or still afraid of the situation they all found themselves in.

The evening parade changed all that. Hundreds turned out for it, eager to wave to the Outsiders as they walked past. Marching bands from all three towns accompanied them, as did the mayors. A good time was had by all.

Secretly, WK had hoped the well-publicized parade might draw out some interesting parties, but no one suspicious seemed to be observing them.

March 6, 1942. Friday

It had been decided by majority vote that the Outsiders would return to the Southland Hideout today and search for Mr. Big. An early encouraging sign was that The Spook had his map partially ready to give to them. It showed the whole north end of the hideout. He was not sure how much of the hideout to the south was unmapped, but he knew Mr. Big was to the south and that at least one stairway to a lower level was to the south. The Spook and his apprentice would even help search for them.

Another early bright spot was finding “Whoa” Nellie and her small band of prostitutes on the west side of the hideout. Nellie surrendered without a fight and allowed the Outsiders to offer safe passage to the surface for any one of her girls who wanted to leave. Nellie lost four of her seven girls in this way, with The Spook and his apprentice leaving to take them to safety, while the party of Darklash, White Knight, Blaze, Gracie, Batman, Robin, and Oscar the Bat-Hound continued on.

But from there things just kept getting more weird. The maze of hallways (which continued further east than they had known) seemed to be randomly cobbled together from different materials. One hallway had a randomly placed pit trap in it, which briefly caught Gracie (she was easily retrieved and Blaze welded the trap door shut). Some rooms made no sense, like an interrogation room lined with doors. Some room’s contents made no sense, like the display rooms of stuffed birds (or the noose and dice by the albatross statue, though WK enjoyed rolling them so much that he kept them).

The interrogation room had led to one of their few combats on this expedition -- as three “scientists” had emerged from a secret room and tried to attack the Outsiders with bombs. Batman’s sleep spell and Darklash’s sword made short work of them, and when one of the bombs did still go off, its charge was almost laughably weak (Batman claimed their case of truth serum as a trophy). Another fight happened when they surprised five hoodlums in a barracks room and three had to get beat up before the remaining surrendered.

And then there was the lone patrolman with a portable radio. He was knocked out by WK with one punch, and the person on the other end of the radio gave away that Mr. Big had an ambush waiting for them at the Orchard Place entrance. It was their big chance -- only, they were deep in the maze and had no idea how to get from where they were to the Orchard Place entrance! (But Gracie wore the portable radio on her back from then on.)

Instead of the confrontation they had hoped for, they spent time looting mostly empty rooms, like the herb garden (Batman picked up belladonna and garlic), or the bedroom where Blaze and Darklash found a spellbook concealed in a couch’s lining (and Batman kept that too).

[Adminenkainen]

Session 16

[We began the night with some leveling; Gracie Hart became a 4th level superhero and Batman reached 4th level as a fighter.]

March 6, 1942. Friday.

During their rest period, the Charm Animal spell wore off on Batman’s second acquired dog and this one chose to wander off.

After resting, the Heroes decided it was time to go confront Mr. Big. They headed in the direction of the Orchard Place entrance, with the Spook following along behind them in case they needed him (he refused to wear the portable radio because it would be hard to sneak around with it). They did not get far -- once they were within sight of the hall of Asian murals, they saw that it was lit-up for the first time ever. There were six kerosene lanterns on the floor, guarded by four hoodlums. White Knight and Darklash crept up on the guards, but then decided it would be better to attack them en masse. Three of the hoodlums dropped right away, while the fourth tried to escape and failed.

Batman had been holding onto a special power since selecting slides from the magic lantern -- Batman knew he could gain the solution to any one problem he set his mind to. He decided he was going to use it to fix the problem of not knowing where Mr. Big was. Suddenly he knew -- Mr. Big was 30 feet away from him to the southwest. Batman bolted into that room.

Mr. Big was an ordinary-looking man in a suit, but wearing a turban and he was in the room south of the hall with five thugs armed with sawed-off shotguns. Batman let Mr. Big have it with his Tommy gun and Mr. Big was seriously hurt right away. Mr. Big tried to zap Batman with a spell that shot out like a ray from Mr. Big’s turban, but Batman resisted it. Robin stayed out of the way, keeping Bat-Hound safe.

Blaze, Darklash, and White Knight, meanwhile, concentrated on dealing with the thugs (Grace tried to help Batman, but there were a lot of bullets in her way). The thugs were tough and could take two or three hits before dropping, but weren’t much good on offense and went down without causing much harm. However, the thugs kept them distracted from stopping Batman, as Batman riddled Mr. Big with bullets until Mr. Big was dead.

Blaze’s theory was that Mr. Big had been somehow responsible for the whole situation they were in, or at least knew valuable information about how it happened, but now that information seemed lost to them. Batman started searching Mr. Big’s body very thoroughly, but the others were soon distracted by a new threat from the long hall -- two more thugs along with four gangsters with Tommy guns.

The Tommy guns might have been a threat, but the heroes held the gangsters at the entrance where they could only shoot one at a time. As they disarmed each gangster in turn, the situation in the hall looked safe enough to run out and start beating people up. It looked like they were going to have everything wrapped up -- when another threat emerged at the west end of the hall. Everyone (but Batman and Robin) raced over to confront a man dressed like a ferret, surrounded by four large ferrets the size of terriers. The man was tough and took a lot of hits, but the ferrets seemed tougher still -- Blaze was getting to be moderately injured from all their bites. Still, the ferrets were soon chased off or knocked out and the crazy man calling himself the Ferret Master was knocked out.

Batman had taken some items off of Mr. Big, including a pouch of gems that he selfishly hoarded to himself, but could not figure out which item of clothes was his disguised wand. Everyone else was concerned now with getting their live prisoners up to the surface and to jail.The Spook turned up now, having seen they did not need his help in the big fight. They carried as many as they could, then borrowed a horse and wagon from the nearest farm and went back to get all the others. While all this was going on, Blaze sprinted at super-speed to the police station to get the authorities.

Chief Wittenberg was impressed with their haul, and helped try to identify the mysterious Mr. Big (but was not anyone in their local records). He informed the Heroes that they had so many prisoners now that all three jails were at near-capacity.

March 7, 1942. Saturday.

Everyone rested the night back at the house. The next day, Batman read the spells in the spellbook they had found earlier yesterday (the previous session) and discovered he now had 3rd level spells at his disposal. Further, he used Detect Magic to find out that Mr. Big’s wand was the snake headband that was around his turban. In addition to holding all of Mr. Big’s still-uncast spells, the headband/wand doubled as a Wand of Paralyzation.

Robin trained Bat-Hound to handle being around gunfire better (an important ability around Batman!).

Everyone (including Batman, once he had his spells back) headed to Des Plaines and the Everburning Tower of Carl Alsher. Today was the day Carl was going to talk to them about his prisoner, The Baron. However, upon their arrival in town, they encountered people running away and dead people in the streets.

Blaze immediately headed to the tower for answers. What he found was Carl lying outside the tower, a secret door at its base opened. Carl was burnt and bleeding and apologized with his dying words for trying to create a new silent stalker out of The Baron, but one who proved so powerful he could not control it. Inside, he promised he had a silver sword and shield that could help fight the stalker.

Meanwhile, Batman, Darklash, Grace, and White Knight found a new silent stalker, much larger than the previous one. They trailed it into a grocery store and soon found themselves in the fight of their careers. The stalker was powerful enough that its bear hugs left both Darklash and White Knight moderately wounded. But Batman cast his new 3rd level spell, Haste, on his teammates and a hasted Gracie was able to pummel the stalker unconscious with a flurry of blows. While Darklash was arguing that it might not be safe to leave the stalker alive, Batman used his magic flaming sword to kill it. Then they went to go check on Blaze.

Blaze had gone inside to hunt for the silver sword and shield. He saw a bloody trapdoor that led underground, but searched the upstairs floors of the tower first. Then he went down through the trapdoor and found stairs leading down, but they seemed to dead end in an empty room.

When Blaze returned to the front door, he saw the other Heroes outside. To make sure everyone could get inside safely, they used a stone fireplace mantel to block the doorway and create a gap in the fire wall. Everyone jumped through the gap safely. Once everyone was searching the dead end at the bottom of the stairs, a secret door was quickly found.

The secret door opened onto a throne room, where a skeleton sat in the throne with a jeweled rod on his lap. Much of Carl’s alchemical lab equipment had been moved down here. And, most importantly, there was a second brass lever in this room, just like the one that had opened the way to Des Plaines. Darklash jumped at the chance to pull the lever before anyone could caution against it. They would not know what effect it had until going outside, but for now they were all agreed -- this tower should be their new base of operations.

[The session ended with Batman hitting 5th level as a magic-user!]

[Adminenkainen]

Session 17

[At the start of the session, White Knight leveled to 4th level in Fighter. WK’s ability scores advanced and he may now be the first original H&H hero ever to have two 18’s.]

March 6, 1942. Friday. Noon.

The Heroes had control of Carl Alsher’s Everburning Tower -- now they just had to figure out what to do with it.

But first, Darklash and Gracie were both badly hurt following their battle with the Baron/Silent Stalker, and Batman badly wanted to examine what appeared to be a magic wand in the lap of the skeleton in the secret basement. Since Batman was out of healing spells, it was agreed they would spend the rest of the night here in Carl’s guest rooms on the upper floors.

March 7, 1942. Saturday. 4 pm.

Batman had his full compliment of spells after a good long rest, and a Detect Magic spell had revealed to him the complexity of the iron, ruby-tipped wand he had found. It functioned as both a wand and a spellbook, for there was a duplicate casting of each spell saved in the wand that would not go away when the spells prepared in it were cast. And the spells saved in the wand went all the way up to one fourth level spell.

Batman wanted to learn his new spells, but the others were itching to go. There seemed to be more for them to do all the time, which now included what Blaze had just learned during this 26 hours of downtime.

For Blaze had left the Tower and gone out to find out what happened when Darklash pulled the Bronze Lever in the basement. The last time pulling a lever had opened up a doorway in the corner of the Fog Wall -- this time it had dropped the entire north wall of the Des Plaines/Park Ridge region.

The region to the north looked mostly wooded, which was always true of the area north of Des Plaines (Blaze learned), and also hilly to the west, which was apparently not true of the area before. Captain Becker had gathered some men already and led them north to explore and see if this area was also surrounded by Fog Wall to the north and, if it did, if it at least extended far enough north to give them access to some of Wheeling and/or Northbrook’s resources.

Indeed, the wealth of options before them left the Heroes momentarily stunned and unable to proceed. Gradually, they reached a consensus that, since they were already here, they should explore the rest of the basement level under the tower (which they already knew extended as far as the river). Besides, Carl had promised them there was a silver sword and a silver shield worth finding here.

First, they were very careful with the double doors that led out of the throne room/laboratory, fearing a trap. Finally they went through and found a hall with two portraits in it. Both portraits showed relatives of Alsher, one holding Batman’s new wand and the other holding the sword and shield. Blaze observed that the figure holding the wand was possibly the skeleton on the throne, but they could not confirm it now that Carl was dead.

A long, winding hallway that led generally east from throne room was lined with covered urns that the Heroes decided it was best to leave alone.

The hallway came to an empty room with two other doors, but they just led to empty cells. There was an empty alcove in the north wall of the room and the Heroes guessed pretty quickly there was a secret door there (the first of many!).

The next room was mostly empty, though Blaze examined a pile of poorly-cut animal skins.

A door led west into a long hall that widens into a room in the middle. The room was lined with skeletons standing at attention with spears and shields. Batman crossed the room safely, carrying the iron wand in front of him. But when White Knight tried it, the skeletons animated. No one was too worried about undead skeletons, since they had fought them before in the graveyard -- but when these skeletons burst into flames, like the tower was immolated, and moved into melee, everyone grew rightly concerned. Blaze took a lot of (cauterized) stabbings and nearly everyone was injured by battle’s end.

But the battle had attracted other combatants that scrambled in at the west end of the room -- strange human/animal hybrids -- that never got a chance to attack because they were mowed down with guns before they could reach the Heroes. The room those creatures came from was a trashed catacomb, but one without other exits. They backtracked and searched for secret doors all the way back to the room of furs, but found nothing.

Knowing there had to be some way this connected up with the river entrance (they knew because they had all taken it before, blindfolded), they decided to go out to the river entrance and try finding their way through from that direction.

Batman and Gracie knew the way down from the river entrance as far as the ogre lair. They used the secret door at the bottom of the stairs to come into another large, empty room with one door and a pile of slate heaped against the wall. They used the door and found the ogre, Leo, at home. Without a fight, they convinced Leo that Carl was dead and he should “work” for them. Blaze wanted to see what was behind that heap of slate in the previous room, and it did actually conceal a second door. The door led to a storage room where they found a rack of weapons and armor, as well as 3 kegs of brandy, one of which Leo claimed for his own.

This led to a long side trek, where the Heroes safely conducted Leo through the Mount Prospect region to the Southland. Lured by the promise of people to eat, Leo was sicced on the hoodlums of the Southland Hideout, with some rules added (can’t eat women, can’t eat the Spook or any of the other Heroes).

The Heroes then returned to the ogre’s lair. White Knight wanted to search the ogre’s toilet room for secret doors, but Darklash stopped him and suggested there were other places left to search first. They all came up empty, though -- except for Robin, who turned out to be really lucky at finding secret doors (starting with this one). This secret door led west to what looked to be a treasure room. Batman was wise to cast Find Traps because, sure enough, the chest in the room and the entire ceiling was trapped. They spent some time trying to deactivate a trap they couldn’t identify and settled on Darklash’s plan of tying WK’s rope around the chest and pulling it out of the room.

It mostly worked; they got the chest halfway across the room before giant blades swinging out of the ceiling cut the rope in half (and thankfully missed everyone out in the hall!). They tried the rope trick again and got the chest -- only to find it had just $100 and a gold locket in it. Darklash claimed the locket, since it had been her plan.

There were no other exits from this room, so they backtracked to the ogre lair (having realized they never searched it for secret doors) and Robin found his second secret door in the east wall. This led to some stairs going down (which was good, because everyone remembered climbing stairs blindfolded), but they came to a dead end. Of course there was another secret door there.

This one led into an east-west corridor. Checking west, Batman was narrowly missed by a large crossbow bolt. They found the crossbow mounted in the back wall at a dead end and disabled the trap.

Going east, the corridor turned north and took them to a straw-lined room with no exits. Of course, Robin found his third secret door, this time in the east wall. The short corridor on the other side headed east to a trap door in the ceiling, which was bothersome because no one recalled having to be lifted up through a trap door while blindfolded.

The raised passage turned south and went past a side room the Heroes could not resist checking out. Inside were three more doors that led to empty cells, and a way north to a hexagonal room that looked like some sorcerer’s summoning room. And it had six sickle-armed pumpkinheads standing in the summoning circle. Everyone wisely avoided the circle while checking the walls for secret doors, but after they failed to find one they were spoiling for a fight and crossed the circle. Like the skeletons, the sickles were wreathed in fire as soon as the pumpkinheads animated. The pumpkinheads were sturdy and did some damage, but they still went down much easier than the lesser number of them had up in the tower just weeks earlier. One of them was even wearing a jeweled necklace, which Blaze claimed as a trophy.

Leaving this side area, the Heroes returned to heading south and came to a trapdoor in the ceiling. When they climbed up, they emerged in a room where bones surrounded a dais on the floor, with them coming up through the dais. The bones started to animate and, as they helped the last one of their team up, 11 skeletons finished knitting back together. This time, though, the skeletons were not wreathed in flames, nor even armed, and they were torn back apart quickly.

There were no obvious exits from this room. There might be another secret door that connected up with where they were earlier, but the Heroes were hurt, tired, and ready to go back home and rest for a day or two.